


(i’m not) scared of the dark

by daemons



Series: death becomes him [2]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Drug Use, F/M, Ghosts, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Personification of Death, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Surrealism, nonlinear timeline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-12
Updated: 2019-07-12
Packaged: 2020-06-26 19:41:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19775071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daemons/pseuds/daemons
Summary: Klaus Hargreeves has been surrounded, enveloped, eaten alive by death for as long as he can remember.





	(i’m not) scared of the dark

**Author's Note:**

> I don’t own any of these characters and I do not profit from them!
> 
> song title from Scared of the Dark from the Into the Spiderverse soundtrack.
> 
> You don’t need to really read the first part to understand this :)

1.

October 1st, 1989. 43 women around the world gave birth, having never been pregnant that morning. A phenomenon that no one could explain, causing headlines and conspiracy theories and all sorts of chaos. _(it died down so quickly, only occasional articles centered on where-are-they-now. The miracle babies. Humanity moves on so quickly)_. 

In a small port-side city in Germany, hidden in the Eastern bloc, the night became overcast and cold and bitter when a young woman collapsed, clutching her swollen belly and shrieking into the dark. The babe was born as quickly as the pregnancy occured. His mother reached weakly for him before falling limp on the floor. Her husband cried in anguish and confusion, shaking her shoulders, begging her to wake up. There was blood everywhere.

The baby was clasped in the arms of the woman’s sister, squirming and covered in blood and amniotic fluid. The baby didn’t cry. He just stared at the world around him, the world he hadn’t even been a fleeting thought in 12 hours ago. Big, bright, green eyes that sent chills down his aunt’s spine, a sense of dread that crept through her grief. 

The ambulance wailed, the woman’s husband raged and yelled and punched a wall. Her sister handed the quiet babe over. In the commotion, in the yelling and the tears and the chill that settled on the city, the babe didn’t make a single sound. 

The husband sold the baby when a shrewd looking man, a rich British inventor, arrived at their doorstop. He eyed the baby, the shock of dark hair and the all-knowing unnerving eyes, and said, “How much for it?”

The woman’s sister argued and pushed and yelled at her brother-in-law. They couldn’t sell the last thing they had left of her sister. He reminded her that the baby, the _parasite_ he called it, had been the one to kill her sister. He wasn’t taking no for an answer, and the billionaire left with her nephew across the bloc. 

Years later, when the wall has been torn down and she had her own children and she hasn’t talked to the man who sold her family since that terrible awful night, she sees him on the news. The billionaire, standing behind a group of children in matching uniforms and domino masks, talked about saving the world and super-powers, and how the families were well compensated. 

She searched for her nephew, for those green eyes and black hair, through the grainy tv screen, focusing on the lanky teenager that bared the slightest resemblance to her sister. The image was too distorted to tell, the domino masks doing their job too well. She didn’t know why she wanted to see him. This boy, once an infant who never cried and made everything cold; who killed her beloved sister and tore her world apart. She hated him. She loved him. She wished she could meet him and tell him that she forgave him. 

Her own family found her that night sobbing and grieving for a long-dead sister and the nephew she never got to know.

-

Number Four curled up in the corner of the suffocating, dark chamber that his father had left him in hours ago. It had felt like days to the tiny child. The tomb smelt like mould and rot, the stifling stench of grave-dirt. It dug into the crevices of his skin, marred by scratches made by broken fingernails. 

Red eyes peered at him from all corners. The moonlight that had peeked through the slats in the stone ceiling had long gone behind a cloud, plunging the child into darkness. The demons crawled towards him, legs long since been broken off and separated and rotted, grey and limp entrails squelching behind them. They laughed at him as he cried, shrieked into his ears when he whimpered and covered them. The stone around him cracked, like tiny explosions, and the ghosts danced over him. Their hands felt like needles passing through his flesh. 

_you’re one of us, Number Four,_ they would hiss at him. 

He cried until the doors finally opened for a second time that night and Number Four collapsed onto the grass outside. It turned brown beneath his fingers. 

-

Klaus Hargreeves has been surrounded, enveloped, eaten alive by death for as long as he can remember. 

-

“I’m your new nanny,” says this woman, and Klaus pulls on her sleeve. Cold grips up her arm and her smile falters.

“Sure,” Klaus says, voice high and young, and the cold follows him. The smell of wet dirt lingers in the air.

He sees the nanny later, neck bent, bawling in a corner, and he doesn’t blink.

-

Five disappears when Klaus is thirteen and a half years old. 

They’re at breakfast, and he’s rolling a joint that’s more spin than anything else, tucked to the side and under the table. He thinks it’s absurd to believe that his father doesn’t know what he’s doing, but also, the old fuck is far too wrapped in his radio to pay too much attention to his merry band of magical misfits. 

Diego, for example, is carving his chair arm to shit. Ben’s reading a book in his lap, a book with a tattered cover that Klaus found in a bargain bin outside the local bookshop and had subsequently slipped into his blazer pocket. Ben had eyed it suspiciously when Klaus had given it to him, because of course he knew that Klaus didn’t exactly pay for it, but heart won over head and now he’s here, reading it covertly at the breakfast table. 

Five stabs the table, yells about the same thing about time travel he’d been yelling about for the past month, Dad ignores him, and Klaus can see Vanya shaking her head. It’s all pretty standard.

What isn’t standard is Five running out of the house, the heavy doors slamming behind him. It’s deathly silent in his wake, the only sound the crackling of the radio. Breakfast is dismissed, and Klaus pockets the now rolled joint. They all wait for Five to come back in their rooms upstairs, dreading the punishment their father would concoct for him. 

But Five doesn’t come back. 

He’s not there the next day.

Or the day after. 

Days slip into weeks and Klaus can hear Vanya crying in her room, and Ben is withdrawn and miserable. Klaus gets high and he stays high. If he’s not high, he’s hijacking whatever liquor he can get his hands on. The tension is miserable, the silence that hangs in the hallways. 

Five’s bedroom door is left open. It’s emptiness gapes at them all. 

One day, Klaus wakes up with a pounding headache, dry-heaves off the side of his bed, and the ghosts seem to sense he’s more sober than usual on this particular day. They creep forward, like an wave of dread, and Klaus groans, hanging his head off the side of his bed. Something pokes out from under his bed, and he grimaces as he reaches for it with one hand. 

It’s a ouija board, it’s box lost long ago and the edges are scuffed and dusty. Klaus slides it across his floorboards, trying to ignore the cold prickles on the back of his neck that mean a ghost with no concept of personal space (which is all of them, he thinks) is hovering right above him. The ouija board is simple, nothing more than a novelty toy really. It makes his chest ache.

_“Here,” Five said, tossing the box at Klaus, “Found this.”_

_Klaus blinked at him, “What is this?”_

_“Ouija board,” Five said, “I read about it. It’s meant to be a way to communicate with the dead. I believe it is a hoax, based entirely on subconscious muscle movements. But, I thought, it could possibly be something tangible for you to use.”_

_Klaus opened the box warily, “Why?”_

_Five shrugged, “You always seem sad when you come back from training. This might help you.”_

__

Klaus feels his eyes sting as he stares at the discarded board. They’d tried it out that day, Five begrudgingly agreeing to sit across and be the second set of hands on the planchette. Two small eleven year olds with nothing more than a spooky toy. Nothing had happened, of course, but Klaus tried it a few more times by himself- only because it had been a rare gift from Five.

Five had never been the sibling known for his warmth. He had been close to Vanya and Ben, always seemed a little softer around them, but he was much smarter than Klaus and it put them at odds. He was always sharp edges and an aura of disdain. 

Klaus realizes that he’s thinking about Five in a past-tense and feels panic swoop in his chest. He scrambles off the bed and pulls the board all the way out, scrubbing the dust off with his fingers. He sits cross-legged, hands trembling above the planchette, and tries to block out the moaning and yells and heavy sounds of the ghosts around him. Focuses on his lost-brother’s face. Inhales.

“Five,” he says to the room, his voice echoing back at him, “If you’re there. Please let me know.”

He trembles. There’s no movement. He tries again, voice shaking. The board is cold beneath his fingertips. The ghosts just stare at him. He notices, out of the corner of his eye, one of them moving towards the board with purpose. 

Klaus gasps and throws the board until it skids across his room. The planchette clatters noisily. The ghost start talking again, voices climbing over each other.

Here’s the thing: Klaus has no fucking problem talking to the dead. The dead do nothing _but_ talk to him. He just needs them to shut the fuck up. He needs them to shut up, right fucking now, so that Five can talk to him and--

He shudders, reaches up into his bedside table drawer for a pack of benzos he had lifted the other day. He swallows one dry, the powdered taste scratching at his throat. He buries his face in his knees and tries to press away the tears that are burning in his eyes. The dead crowd him. But not Five. Five is not amongst them.

He doesn’t touch the board again. Five’s portrait is hung over the fireplace. It feels empty, soulless. It feels final. 

No one came running when he screamed anymore. No help came. He’d lie awake at night, staring at the crazed demons around him, unable to move until morning light came or the ghosts chose to vanish on its own. 

Klaus dances through the halls some nights and sees Vanya, sitting in the kitchen, studiously making sandwiches. Sometimes he sneaks in, begs her for half, and she always, _always_ obliges him. Sweet, caring, Vanya. They don’t talk about why he’s up, about why he’s always glassy-eyed and listless. Why he cuts their conversations short to vomit in the sink. Sometimes Ben joins them, his eyes dark and haunted. 

After awhile, Klaus stops coming for the sandwiches and starts sneaking out of his window instead. The ouija board is shoved under his bed and forgotten about. 

-

When Klaus gets his hands tattooed, high off his fucking ass and grinning like an idiot, _hello_ and _goodbye_ in minimalist type, he thinks about Five. 

-

He drops the cigarette into the mound of abandoned ashes, clumped in the leaves and soggy with the rain that batters around his head hollowly.

“I bet you’re loving this,” he muses, “The team, at it’s best.”

He considers kicking the pile, letting it scatter to the non-existent wind. Ben’s decimated statue is broken and sad in his eyeline when he stands up. It’s real-life, very-much-dead, counterpart is studying it’s remains, unreadable emotions flickering along his face. Maybe if Klaus was sober, he’d be able to figure out what Ben is thinking in that moment. But that does involve being sober.

Klaus has never been sober for a funeral.

“Best funeral ever,” he says, instead. Ben barely glances at him. The rain never touches him.

-

Ben’s statue is glistening and new and it looks nothing like their sweet, quiet brother. It’s performative at best, a straight up insult at worst. Their father doesn’t even seem sad, just disappointed. 

The rain hammers down on them. They are seventeen. They are mourning their brother. It’s all wrong.

Klaus remembers the feeling of Ben’s wrist in his hand, trying to pull his brother towards him and stop the inevitable. The feeling of a stringy pulse slowing under his fingers, the wet rattles from his brother’s lungs, the cold that spread from the tips of Klaus’s fingers and enveloped his brother. 

Klaus never gets to say anything. Never gets to say a word. 

He vomits, a gory concoction of ecstasy and barbiturates and cheap paint-thinner vodka. He keels over with a silent whimper, Ben’s lifeless statue staring back at him. 

-

Ben’s ghost appears to him after the fact. 

Ben’s ghost is torn apart and broken, dark congealed blood frothing from his mouth. He gargles, stained hands reaching for Klaus, who is frozen at the dining table. 

His spoon clatters, making Diego jump. 

Ben’s ghost moves closer, eyes wide with terror, _Klaus_.

Klaus screams. The dining table shakes. Allison is flying towards him, arms outstretched. 

Ben’s ghost is crying. Blood is spilling down his chin. Klaus can’t look away. It looks nothing like his brother. 

It looks everything like his brother. 

_Klaus!_ the grotesque apparition is trying to say to him, words bubbling, _Klaus, please!_

Klaus keeps screaming. He is distantly aware of Allison’s hands on him, on his face, trying to get him to look at her. He can hear Diego trying to call for him. Vanya might be crying. Klaus can’t tell. He can’t focus on anything other than Ben, Ben, Ben.

Ben’s bloody hands pass through him. There’s an emotion that looks like horror on his face. 

Something in Klaus breaks.

-

“Do you remember your death?” Klaus asks Ben one bitter night, tucked into the corner of this dank drug den they’ve found themselves in. Well, that _Klaus_ has found himself in. 

Ben startles, “What?”

“Your death,” Klaus repeats. He’s watching an fellow junkie wander the dark hall outside of this room he’s tucked himself into. She’s wailing, eyes unseeing. There’s vomit splattered on her chin. She hasn’t noticed Klaus yet. 

There’s silence from Ben, then, “Yeah.”

Klaus turns his head to look at him. His curls get caught on the wood panels behind him, the only solid point he can feel as he floats. The belt is still tied above his elbow. The needle is rolling around somewhere. He had been humming happily until the dead junkie showed up. Now he feels a pressure in his chest, like he’s about to cry. 

“I never got to say goodbye to you,” Klaus whispers. Ben looks stricken.

“I’m right here,” his brother says, and moves so he’s sitting next to him, “Klaus.”

“Yeah, but,” Klaus says, his tongue feeling way too big for his mouth, “It’s not the same.”

Ben doesn’t say anything. Klaus wonders if he’s hurt his feelings. Ghost-emotions. Klaus giggles. 

He’d started heroin not long after Ben’s death. Two weeks, maybe. When his normal pills hadn’t worked and he could still see Ben’s ghost. Still bloody and torn and terrified.

Ben didn’t go away. He figured out how to hide the bloody reminders of his death, until he just looked how Klaus remembered him. It didn’t make it hurt any less. Still doesn’t.

It’s been what, seven years? 

“Eight,” Ben says softly. Klaus realizes he’s speaking out loud. Oh well. “It was our birthday last month.”

Klaus is digging in his coat pockets for more resin when he says that. He grins sloppily, raises the bag in an mock-salute, “Happy birthday to us, then.”

They never really had a birthday. They never really were people, come to think of it. They were numbers. Number Four and Number Six. Here, in this home sweet crackhouse, while Klaus melts the resin in a spoon so he can inject it straight into his veins and Ben, dearly departed, watches on with misty sadness in his eyes.

Maybe Klaus should feel worse about constantly making his dead brother cry. He can’t really make himself feel anything, is the thing. 

The junkie in the hallways screams as she realizes she’s dead. Klaus can never escape them. 

-

Klaus has never gotten a chance to say goodbye.

-

“Klaus!” Allison is crying, grabbing his wrists as he stares wide-eyed at Ben past her. He’s screaming and screaming because _this can’t be happening_. Not Ben, not Ben, not Ben. 

Ben is dead. Ben is meant to be at peace. Klaus is not going to be haunted by his brother. It’ll kill him.

“Klaus, please!” she says, and ghost-Ben says the same thing. Klaus’ voice cracks mid-scream. He thrashes against her, realizing that at some point he’d fallen off his chair and was on his knees, hands over his ears. 

“Klaus,” Ben gargles, “Please help me, what’s going on, I don’t know what’s going on--”

Klaus tries to reach for him, fingernails scratching at the floorboards until they crack and bleed. His hand goes through Ben’s legs. 

“Benny,” he gasps into the floor, screams morphing into sobs that pull from somewhere deep in his lungs, “Benny, no, no, no, no, no, no. Not you.”

Allison’s hands are pulled off him. He can hear Luther talking, Diego trying to get through to him, but Klaus just curls into a ball and sobs himself hoarse. 

They leave. They always leave. Every time they try and touch them, to move him or comfort him- he can’t tell- he screams like their hands are fire. Ben doesn’t leave. The pot plant in the corner wilts. 

He eventually passes out on the dining room floor. 

-

As Klaus climbs the steps of the crack house, stepping over crushed beer cans and empty dimebags, the smell of stale piss and vomit acidic in his nose, a skeleton looking woman bumps into him, eyes wild. Klaus grabs her arm to steady her, shakes it slightly. She hisses at him, skin cold under his hand. He lets her go.

He shoots up in that bareboned, stained, room and watches as she vomits, chokes, and dies on the floor. He wonders if she remembers when she wakes up. 

He doesn’t cry for them anymore.

-

The man tips him backwards, hands in the lapels of his uniform blazer. The ground is fifty floors below them, the people specks on the sidewalk, the sound of the city muted. The wind rushes through Klaus’ ears. His siblings are somewhere down there, running, trying to get up. 

Villain of the week bares his teeth, spittle flying, something that looks like fear in his eyes, “You stink of death, child. Now you will become it.”

Klaus tries to hit him, flails at him. Cold spreads from his fingers, blue veins appearing like cobwebs on the other man’s face. The man tips him further back, and Klaus panics. There’s a shout, the man turns around, dragging Klaus back halfway. There’s a heavy, wet thud, and the hands go slack on his jacket and Klaus is falling- he’s falling--

Diego grabs his arm, wrenches, and they’re falling back through the right side of the window. Klaus lands on his hands and knees, gasping through his tight lungs. The man’s wide, unseeing eyes stare at him, blood pooling from the knife embedded in his head. He feels every inch the child he is. 

The blood puddle reaches his hands, spreading through the gaps in his fingers. It’s warm. 

The victims of the man that had been following Klaus around all day, begging and sobbing, disappear like a cloud on the horizon. The cold lingers.

_You stink of death, child_

-

“You look like death.”

He’s leaning on the brick wall, cigarette hanging out of his mouth as he counts the crumpled wad of bills in his hand. He tucks them into his jacket pocket and startles at the voice. A girl is leaning next to him, eyes bright blue and bloodshot. Her hair is a pale blonde, skin an almost translucent white, and she pulls a joint out of her purse. She gestures to his cigarette. 

“Can I get a light?” her voice is muffled by the stick. Klaus pulls a matchbox out of his pocket and strikes a match with shaking hands. The girl leans in, the end of the joint glowing red, and she breathes the sticky-sweet smoke out after a pause, “Thanks.”

Klaus nods mutely, then, “Do I know you?”

The girl nods, rolling her neck, “Yeah, man. I work at the bar.”

She gestures to the club a few buildings down from them. It’s a known, skeevy place, owned by the drug trafficking and pimp contingent of the city’s number one criminal mafia. Klaus isn’t really sure what they’re called exactly. He just has to look pretty, and do what he’s told. He’s always been bad at the second one, but hey, money is money. The blonde girl does look familiar, but he’s only started frequenting the place last week. 

“I’m Laurel,” the girl says after another beat, and shrugs, “You?”

Klaus coughs, “Number---, I, Klaus.” 

The girl doesn’t blink, “You should get out of here, Klaus. You won’t last more than a couple of months.”

“What is she talking about?” Ben asks from his spot on the bench. Klaus glances at him, shrugs. 

The girl- Laurel- follows his gaze, but doesn’t seem perturbed by the absence of any other person. Klaus just stays there as she walks past him, reaching forward and patting him gently on the cheek.

“They’ll eat you alive,” she says softly, and Klaus just blinks at her. He watches her leave, her coat a mix of patchwork blacks, faux fur on all the edges. _They’ll eat you alive_

Klaus thinks about the ghosts, crowding in on him from all angles, and shudders. Humans are the least of his worries. 

He stays at that wall, with only Ben for company, until one of the more frequent “gangsters”, as Klaus had come to think of them, slides his car past, and the back door opens. He can hear Ben say something, but Klaus just shrugs and skips over to the car. Rent needs to be paid, after all.

-

He sits on the steps next to his not-dead-little-brother and listens to the not-ghost talk about Dolores, with such longing and agony in his voice that Klaus remembers that this isn’t Five. Not really. It’s a completely new person to the child he once knew. A person in love, now, obviously.

Klaus thinks about all the people in his life he’d loved. People who took them into their beds, their homes, until he clawed them enough that they put him back on the street. Or until he chewed them up and spat them out himself. 

He says something about an old fling who made amazing Italian food. A couple of weeks kinda ordeal, one of those ones where Klaus was between rehabs and halfway houses and needed a bed. He doesn’t think about blonde hair or blood or feeling like, like--

Klaus isn’t capable of love. He’s known this for a long time now. 

-

Death cannot love. 

-

The warmth hangs in the air like a stifling blanket, settling itself on its surroundings. Klaus can hear the early morning chatter of Hue from somewhere down below, the buzz of mosquitoes that try fruitlessly to enter the net that surrounds the bed. Soon, the morning sun will rise. The sound of distant gunfire will start up again. It’s inevitable.

Dave rustles against his side, making a sighing noise, one hand reaching out for him sluggishly. Klaus feels a wave of fondness. The other man looks young and untethered in his sleep, every-inch a quintessential Midwest boy next door. He could be pulled straight from a glossy housewives magazine about 50s nostalgia, all iron-downed button-up shirts and a white picket fence and a steaming apple pie. Klaus can almost hear the chimes of children’s trikes. Picture perfect. 

He traces the lines on Dave’s palm mindlessly, feeling the other man stir next to him. 

Something cold breaks through the muggy blanket, and Klaus feels the prickles on the back of his neck stand up. He shudders, and he hears Dave move more than he would in his sleep- a sure sign of been woken up.

The tiny Vietnamese girl stares at Klaus through the white mosquito net. Her hair is singed, pressed close to her head. She moves slowly, her clothes tattered, until she’s closer to the bed. One side of her body is burnt- black and red and gruesome in a way that makes stomachs turn. It’s silent as she stares, eyes wide and furious. She opens her mouth, Klaus feels every hair on his body stand up, and then she wails. 

Klaus throws himself back, colliding with Dave’s now very awake form. He doesn’t know if he’s making any noise, he can’t hear over the sound of a child’s screams, but Dave has wrapped his arms around Klaus’ torso and is pressing him into his bare chest. 

Vietnam reeks of death. It has an air of terror and morbidity that lingers in the humid air. A constant buzz of anxiety that comes with the whistling of possible missiles, the muted booms of landmines, the near-constant pop-pop-pop of gunfire. Klaus’ hunkers down in those damp trenches, the stink of the jungle surrounding him, and listens to the guttural screams around him, the way they’ll always _always_ lose men to the dark, and Klaus will wait with bated breath for them to appear to him. The ghosts blend so seamlessly with the living. They were all illuminated by the bright orange fires of napalm bombs, all covered in rotting blood, all shuffling around like zombies. Hell on earth, truly. 

Klaus, every night, stares at that briefcase. The numbers are meaningless, dangerous etchings that glare back at him. He thinks about opening but where-- where would that send him? Somewhere worse? 

He knows he can’t stay here. But Dave will flash him that gorgeous smile, teeth white and eyes crinkled, or brush his hand on the nape of Klaus’ neck, always steady and always gentle, and Klaus thinks _just one more day_.

Then Dave brushes Klaus’ wrist with his thumb, leaning in so purposely, and Klaus’ meets him halfway and his lips are so soft, sending sparks up Klaus’ spine and he thinks _just a bit longer_. 

But death still follows him, and death is horrible and furious and angry at him, because they can see it’s him who’s pulled the trigger, they know that he’s helping kill them, and they try and scratch at him and scream and--

Dave pulls him in closer, brushes his lips over Klaus’ temple, and doesn’t ask. He just wipes Klaus’ tears away and hums softly. 

Klaus might be in love.

-

“I see dead people.”

Laurel shifts, rolls her neck down to look at him where he’s sprawled across her lap, and her hands that have been tangled in his hair still. He looks up at her, her profile blurry through his glazed eyes, so he can’t figure out what she’s thinking. She hums questioningly at him.

“Dead people,” he repeats, “Ghosts. I can see them.”

“Oh,” she says back, her tone lilting with sudden humor, “Yeah. I know, Haley-Joel.”

Klaus frowns, “Oh?”

“Yeah,” she says. Her voice is soft and musical, “You’re one of the Umbrella Academy kids, yes?”

Klaus feels panic shoot through his spine. He twitches, knocking Laurel’s arms off him, and sits up. His head spins with vertigo, and the blonde reaches out with a hand to steady him. Klaus feels sick, feels something that feels like betrayal sit in his stomach like nausea. It could also be the comedown. 

“How-- how--” he splutters at her, and she narrows her eyes. 

“Klaus,” she says, so softly, but there’s an edge to her words, “Honey. You talk to thin air. You refer to yourself as Number Four. I grew up in this city. Of course I figured out who you are.”

He blinks at her, wide-eyed. The tattoo on his wrist itches, “Do you care?”

Laurel shrugs, leaning over Klaus’ shoulder to reach for the white rocks on the bedside table. She bypasses the smack, every-time. _I want to be happy, not dead _she tells Klaus when he offers it to her. Klaus watches her through half-lidded eyes as she sniffs it, rolling her neck and sighing happily. She traces her fingers on his jaw.__

__“No, Klaus,” she says finally, voice thick, “I don’t give a fuck.”_ _

__Klaus watches her move above him, all pale freckled skin and white-gold hair, angelic and soft in every way that Klaus is not. His throat feels swollen, tight, and he swallows the lump that sits painfully there. Hot tears prick at his eyes. Laurel frowns, reaches forward to wipe them away with the tips of her fingers._ _

__“We’re gonna get out of here,” she whispers, words sweet and _impossible_ , “I promise.”_ _

__Klaus looks at the dark shadows that dance on the dirty motel room wall. The shadows pressed at his spine, whispered in his ears, ate at him and pulled at his insides like unravelling ribbons. The blood-curdling screams that crawled in his ears and drove knives into his head. The cold that wormed its way into his bones, until he was always on the bad side of frozen. At night, the darkness seemed to feed them and they crowd him, rasping at him._ _

__He would wake up in the middle of the night to rotten eyes hovering above him, staring down at him. Klaus would lie, unable to move, as the ghost opened its mouth to wail at him, but there’s nothing below it’s top lip. Hands like bones would reach for him in his bed. It could only gargle._ _

__He watches the dark hands reach around Laurel’s head like a black halo. He shudders, a full body twitch that bumps Laurel’s hands, and he reaches over her shoulder for the lighter and needle that lie next to the motel-mandatory bible next to the lamp. It’s already stained with white powder and dark resin. Small plastic baggies tucked next to it. It’s a mockery. Laurel props her chin on his shoulder, lips moving into his skin as she watches him melt down the heroin. She looks sad._ _

__“I promise, Klaus,” she repeats, and he ignores her. He’s good at that._ _

__“Don’t make promises you can’t keep, _baby_ ,” he spits back at her, and she flinches. _ _

__He slides the needle in._ _

__-_ _

__“I promise,” Dave breathes into his collarbone, “We’ll get out of here, we’ll start somewhere new, we’ll survive and we’ll live and everything is going to be okay.”_ _

__Dave’s dark-blonde hair curls around his ears, the nape of his neck, curling onto his forehead. Klaus brushes it back, thinks about a long-gone blonde girl that promised him the same thing, and reaches for the bottle next to the bed._ _

__“Don’t make promises you can’t keep, baby,” he breathes to the ceiling above him. Dave sighs._ _

__The moonshine burns his throat._ _

__-_ _

__“I lost someone, okay?”_ _

__He thinks about Vietnam, and blue eyes and sandy hair, all gentle hands and kind words and warmth that followed him. _Don’t make promises you can’t keep, baby.__ _

__Dave had promised him they’d get out of there. Laurel had promised him they’d get out of there. Neither of them did._ _

__Klaus has always been in love with liars._ _

__He drinks more of the vodka, ignores Diego’s complaints, and lets the grief sit in his stomach until it swims with the alcohol. He watches Diego turn the heater on, and doesn’t feel the sudden onslaught of cold._ _

__-_ _

__The stained lighter flicks, a scraping sound as the mechanism is forced again and again to catch aflame. His fingers tremble, hands cupped around the cigarette in his mouth. It catches, he inhales, and the stale nicotine sneaks tendrils through his lungs. The ensuing headspins, faint, distracts from the constant shaking in his hands._ _

__He slides down the brick wall, tucks his legs as close to his body as possible, and watches the cars go past. Wheels keep hitting the rain-puddles at the curb, spraying the pavement in front of him. The artificial street-light flickers above him, the setting sun an unwelcome glare, and Number Four balances his chin on his knees, cigarette dangling close to his face._ _

__“Hey,” Ben says, “We should find cover. It’s freezing, Klaus.”_ _

__Klaus closes his eyes and hums, “You can’t even feel the cold, Benny. You’re dead.”_ _

__“Thanks for the reminder,” Ben stretches his legs out on the bench he was perched on, “But you’re not.”_ _

__“What a shame,” Klaus grumbles, and takes a drag of the slowly fading cigarette. His heart beats painfully in his chest, like it’s stuck in thick syrup, and his lungs wheeze. He can feel Ben watching him _(because Klaus has doomed him to that life, that horrid after-life, always watching)_ , barely concealed worry, and flicks the butt of the cigarette in the space between them. _ _

__Honestly, he can barely feel the cold. His arms are tucked into a ratty long-sleeve shirt he hitched from somewhere, and his veins feel like a smouldering fire. The ghosts have been keeping a distance tonight, aside from Ben. He can feel them dancing in his peripheral vision, always in the wings waiting for him, always with their cold-freezing-cold hands outstretched. _Klaus, Klaus, Klaus.__ _

__The moderately chilly wind has nothing on the dead. His heart thrums, strained, and he gasps, hand flying up to massage his chest. He can feel how cold the tips of his fingers are through his shirt._ _

__“Klaus,” Ben says, and he’s squatting in front of him, brow furrowed, “You look really bad.”_ _

__“Thanks for the beauty tip,” Klaus says, but it comes out more like a gasp, “I’ll keep it in mind.”_ _

__Ben reaches forward, like he’s going to touch Klaus’ forehead, but his hand just brushes through and Klaus shivers involuntarily. It’s never a pleasant feeling, like pins and needles, like a dead leg that’s slowly getting blood flow back, “I think something is wrong.”_ _

__Everything is wrong, Klaus thinks, but responds, “No shit, hey.”_ _

__His last batch of smack had obviously been cut with something gross. Grosser than usual, he corrects himself, and his lungs burn. He feels like he’s freezing and melting from the inside, at the same time. He shakes his head, damp curls spraying rainwater._ _

__He slowly climbs up to standing, hands scraping against the wall has his stiff limbs struggle to remember how to support him. Ben hovers anxiously, like a particularly bizarre fairy godmother. Klaus giggles to himself. Ben’s mouth is moving, and Klaus stares at it. _Hospital.__ _

__“Nah,” he mumbles, “I’m fine, okay.”_ _

__He trudges forward, hyper-focusing on one foot in front of the other. If he can get somewhere that isn’t smack bang in the middle of this store front foot path, he can sleep off whatever bullshit his dealer cut his stuff with, the bastard._ _

__Klaus’ hand lands on cool glass, and it feels good against his hot palm. He knows, realistically, that his body temperature is far below average and the feeling of overheating is all in his dope sick brain. He concentrates on the feeling of the window, leans forward to get his balance, and looks at the glass as his struggling body tries to get his feet underneath him._ _

__The books sit neatly on the red-cloth table display. He blinks owlishly, slowly blurring vision clearing. A familiar face, a face not seen by him since he was a child, comes into focus and he gapes stupidly._ _

___My Life as Number Seven: An Autobiography by Vanya Hargreeves._ _ _

__“What the fuck,” says Ben, mirroring Klaus’ currently unsaid sentiments perfectly. _Yeah, what the fuck?__ _

__He stumbles along the wall, pushing at the door that clangs loudly. The book is directly within his line of vision, and he picks it off the display table with trembling fingers. An Autobiography by Vanya Hargreeves. The photo of his sister, taken from childhood, looks back at him sternly. Black is starting to creep into his peripherals, his chest shrieking in agony, and the ghosts have become impatient, starting to tug at the back of his head. _KlausKlausKlaus._ He flips the book over, scans the blurb._ _

__Someone is yelling at him, shopkeeper maybe, something about a dirty crackhead but the roaring in his brain takes over as Vanya’s solemn eyes look back at him._ _

__“Klaus!” Ben says at him, but he doesn’t hear it. The ground is suddenly beneath his knees, then his head, and the book lies clamped in his numb hands._ _

__-_ _

__“You know, I had my doubts about you when you first showed up on this tour,” Bill says fondly._ _

__He’s sitting across from Klaus, cleaning his gun thoroughly and reverently. Klaus looks up from the paperback someone lent him (and his heart aches for Ben) and smirks, “Is that so, General?”_ _

__Bill laughs, “Oh, definitely. Look at you, all fucking elbows and stick limbs like a baby deer. Pale as all shit, you look like a ghost. That’s why we call you Spook.”_ _

__Klaus huffs, “Yeah, I figured.”_ _

__“‘Course you did. You’re no dumbass.”_ _

__Klaus can think of a fair few people who would disagree. Still, Bill is a no-nonsense kind of guy, and it feels nice to hear, “So, what’s your humble opinion of me now?”_ _

__Bill pretends to think, stroking his grey-specked beard, “Well, I ain’t no Katz so I ain’t gonna tell you the sun shines out of your ass. But I know that my ass, as well a hellavu lot of other blokes’ on this squad, would be toast if it wasn’t for you. Didn’t think you had the fight in you.”_ _

___Number Four_ Klaus’ brain echoes. He smiles darkly, “I had an interesting childhood.”_ _

__“I bet you did,” Bill responds, “I’m glad we’ve got you, Spook.”_ _

__Klaus ducks his eyes, the novel forgotten in his hands, “Well gee, thanks, Bill.”_ _

__“Klaus?”_ _

__They both look up as Dave enters the tent, his eyes tired and mouth tight. He darts between Klaus and Bill, frowning. Klaus looks at him questioningly, “Yes?”_ _

__“Who are you talking to, babe?” Dave asks softly._ _

__Klaus feels a spike of panic at the endearment, looking quickly at Bill, but the man is just looking between them with a fond smile, and a raised eyebrow._ _

__“Uh, Bill,” Klaus says, and gestures to the man in question._ _

__Dave stares, “Klaus… are you feeling okay? Bill is on patrol.”_ _

__Dread claws at Klaus’ chest. The panic from before is growing into his throat, his lungs, like a parasite, and he looks back at Bill, who’s fond smile becomes sinister. There’s a growing spot of blood on his khaki jacket, and the more Klaus looks on, the bigger it grows. The side of Bill’s face starts to rot, flesh charred and bloody._ _

__“No,” Klaus whispers, to no one in particular, “No, no, no.”_ _

__There are hands on him, suddenly, and he flinches back, glancing up. Dave looks frightened, “Klaus, talk to me, baby, please. What’s wrong?”_ _

__Bill’s stare is frozen at them, dead and unmoving. Klaus knows he’s shaking, can feel his fingernails digging into his arms until pools of blood spike up. Dave’s hands are fluttering around his shoulders, his face, trying to talk to him._ _

__Someone is yelling outside the tent. There’s movement. Dave stands up, moves to the flap and yells back. Klaus just stares at the corpse across from him. He can’t hear a thing._ _

__The cot dips in front of him, the paperback removed from his listless fingers, and Dave’s baby-blue eyes are back in front of him, hands caging Klaus’ face._ _

__“Klaus,” he says, voice low and soft like he’s talking to a spooked animal, “Klaus, what’s wrong?”_ _

__“Bill’s dead,” Klaus says without thinking, his throat rasping._ _

__Dave stares, “How did you--”_ _

__“Isn’t he?”_ _

__Dave’s eyes close briefly, “Yes.”_ _

__Then--_ _

__“You’re scaring me.”_ _

__Klaus feels like he’s been kicked in the chest._ _

__He’s spent his whole life terrified. Terrified of the shadows and the dark and the screams that eat at him._ _

__He looks at Dave’s face and sees the same fear. The fear of the unknown._ _

__“Dave,” he croaks, and those eyes, so beautiful, are looking at him for the answers that Klaus isn’t sure he can give, “Can I tell you something?”_ _

__-_ _

__“I can’t believe she would write that!”_ _

__Ben’s voice echoes around the small, sterile, community center room, and Klaus winces, flapping his hand in the general direction of his brother, shushing him loudly. Mary-anne, _(or was it just Mary? Marcy?)_ stutters slightly, and barely anyone notices or flinches, because this is a group rehab session. Telling the invisible voices inside of your head to shut up was common ground here. _ _

__“Turn the page,” Ben says, eager to continue reading. Klaus is still a page behind, but he dips the book down in some semblance of listening to Mary-Anne. He’s still on the same page when they get to him,_ _

__“Klaus,” says the soft-spoken therapy leader, “Would you like to say something?”_ _

__Klaus glances up from the words on the page, pathetic creature, and quickly shakes his head. The group leader sighs- in disappointment maybe, Klaus can’t tell, and moves on._ _

__Klaus flips the page for Ben, finally. When the rehab session wraps up, Klaus moves over to Mary-something and shakes her hand, apologizes for interrupting her. Her eyes are glazed. He shrugs, he tried to be nice._ _

__Later, Klaus keeps reading in his nice government mandated rehab bunk, using a flashlight like a child because it’s lights out. Government mandated rehab blows, who knew. Turns out the hospital will recommend a nice dose of mandatory rehab after you accidentally shoot up a speedball, without knowing it was a speedball, and a lot of it too. Mandatory rehab also becomes a lot more mandatory when you forget that your very angry brother is still your emergency number._ _

__“What,” Diego had spat, “The everliving, everlasting, fuck, is wrong with you, Four?”_ _

__Klaus had winced, his blood work would have been an absolute mess. When the nurse suggests the public rehab to Diego, his brother didn’t even hesitate. _Yeah, I’ll take him now.__ _

___I don’t suggest trying to make a run for it, Klaus. I will pin you to that disgusting hospital painting over there so fast._ _ _

___Could’ve guessed you’re the kinky type, Diego. All that… leather._ _ _

__Klaus had pressed him about Vanya’s book, to which Diego gave him a copy, with it’s back cover missing like it had been torn off. They didn’t talk about it any further._ _

__He figures he’ll stay at this rehab for awhile, as a thanks to Diego more than any conscious desire to be sober. Also, as Ben adds helpfully, a dry and warm place to sleep._ _

__“This book is brutal,” Ben says softly, “And kind of unfair.”_ _

__“I don’t know,” Klaus says, “I really thought the part where she describes Allison as, what was it, a stone-cold-motherfucking-bitch, was a moment of pure poetry.”_ _

__Beat. “She did not write that.”_ _

__“No,” Klaus says, “But she may as well of.”_ _

__Ben has no retort to that, because, well, it’s true._ _

__“You seemed to have escaped her literary wrath,” Klaus points out._ _

__“Yeah, but I died tragically young,” Ben says, “You can’t say mean things about me.”_ _

__“Watch me, you annoying prick,” Klaus mutters, but his throat catches, “Glad we can joke about it.”_ _

__One of the other patients curses loudly, very clearly pointed at Klaus. He rolls his eyes, flicks the flashlight off, “Damn, you’d think they’d never bunked with a crazy person before.”_ _

__“They’ve never bunked with you, more likely.”_ _

__“That we know of,” Klaus corrects, and the invisible patient hisses again, “Fine, fine.”_ _

__He can’t sleep, though. Some of Vanya’s words flash in his head like a particularly cruel slideshow. He wonders how she’s doing. If the others have reached out to her. If she would even pick up the phone. He wonders if their father has read it. Unlikely, he couldn’t care less._ _

__A shadow walks past his bunk, bringing with it a tell-tale flush of cold and cloying smell of wet dirt. Klaus turns his head, despite every nerve and bone in his body begging him not to, and looks at the ghost. Blood is flowing steadily from the gashes on her inner arm, bubbling up and down in flashes of crimson and dark red. Her eyes are vacant, sad, and she looks straight through Klaus, the bone-chill settling in as she registers that he can see her._ _

__Klaus recognizes her from group therapy. Mary, or something. Tears well in her eyes, she lifts her arms and blood drips down like a drying painting. Her guttural scream cuts through Klaus’s head, piercing, and he covers a pillow over his head. It doesn’t do much, but it’s something as he listens to her screams, the sound of an ambulance, and the knowledge that workers have most certainly found her body in one of these cramped rooms. She’s dead, but she’s here, screaming his name over and over again _help me help me what’s going on._ Klaus whimpers. _ _

__The next morning he grabs his stuff, tucks Vanya’s book in it, and leaves. He doesn’t think about the girl-from-group-therapy whose wailing echoes down the hallways that he puts firmly behind him._ _

__-_ _

__“My sister wrote a book about me,” Klaus says, leaning over the bar to yell at Laurel. The bass of the music thumps in his chest, makes the molly more potent in his blood. He grins at her, all teeth._ _

__Laurel pauses, a half-clean glass in her hand and a dishrag in the other, and just looks at him, “Yeah, and?”_ _

__“She called me a pathetic junkie. Quite insulting, actually.”_ _

__Next to him, Ben scoffs. Laurel laughs as she moves to start making drinks._ _

__“Klaus, baby,” she says, “You kind of are.”_ _

__Her words are harsh, cutting, and even Ben looks taken aback._ _

___(Ben had always liked Laurel, with all her faux-cleanliness and soft mouth and pretty blonde hair and the way she stands in between Klaus and whatever angry-pimp is yelling at him and Klaus_ should _feel bad whenever she gets backhanded across the face for him but heroin makes it hard to give a shit about anything.)__ _

__Laurel takes one look at Klaus’ face, at his wide hurt eyes, and sighs. She’s moving drinks onto a black tray as she lets him stew in that moment, coming around the bar with the tray balanced in one hand. She smacks him a kiss on his cheek, pushes a curl off his forehead with her thumb, and pats his face._ _

__“You don’t have to be,” she says, “You can be happy.”_ _

__With that, she saunters off, and Klaus is still feeling hurt bubbling in his chest so he doesn’t watch her walk away. He just reaches over the bar, takes the abandoned bottle of whiskey that Laurel was using, and sneaks it into his jacket pocket._ _

__He still waits for her outside, sipping from the bottle and letting it burn his insides. The ghosts are driven away by alcohol and smack and the thump-thump of drum and bass inside the dirty club._ _

__-_ _

__Dave loves him like a fire._ _

__Klaus is so cold and icy, all the time, and he makes everything around him cold. Dave is hot, so warm, like sunshine and napalm and the end of the world all at once. He burns Klaus alive._ _

__They fuck in that small Vietnamese hotel, the sheets sweaty and tangled around them. In between orgasms, they share a cigarette and they talk._ _

__Dave talks about his two sisters back in that small, lake-side midwestern town. Esther and Ruth, he says fondly, but he talks a lot about Ruth and his nephews and how Ruth protected him growing up and he doesn’t really talk about Esther. He talks about ice-fishing and his parents and how his Dad never forgave him when he caught Dave kissing the baker’s son behind the town church. He talks about his mother, how he was excited to see her again when he finishes his enlistment._ _

__“You would love it,” he tells Klaus, talking about his hometown, “It’s the most beautiful place on earth. It would be even better with you there.”_ _

__And Klaus, he can _see_ it. Can see meeting Dave’s mother and sister and owning a small cottage amongst the chestnut trees that bloom and die with the seasons, can see the glistening blue lake in the summer and ice-skating on that same water during winter. It looks like heaven. It looks like everything he’s ever wanted and never dreamt he’d have._ _

__Dave asks about Klaus’ family. And something breaks in his chest._ _

__“My sister wrote a book about all of us,” he says quietly, “She called me a pathetic junkie.”_ _

__Dave looks stricken, and pushes Klaus back until he’s sprawled over the humidity-damp covers and they’re chest to chest, foreheads pressed together._ _

__“Baby,” Dave says, so damn softly, “You have never been pathetic. You never will be pathetic.”_ _

__Klaus gapes at him, surges up to meet his lips, and he doesn’t feel cold anymore._ _

__-_ _

__Nobody ever listens to the lookout._ _

__Not when they assume he’s high off his ass the whole time (and he is- what of it?), not when he’s so easily distracted by the specters that float around him. Fresh ghosts always hold better conversations, Klaus has found. Not when his siblings pull all the weight in terms of fighting._ _

__Luther and his strength._ _

__Diego and his deadly precision._ _

__Allison and her voice._ _

__Ben and his horrors._ _

__Klaus is a dead weight that hovers in the doorways and tries not to breathe when the ghosts hiss down his neck, pulling at his hair and his clothes. Even if he’s so high he doesn’t know what’s up and down, even when it sounds like they’re talking to him underwater, even on days where he can stare them down with steel and _dare_ them to kill him, they smother him. _ _

__Klaus is the lookout because there’s nothing left for him._ _

__But on that day, that horrible, haunted day, when he’s stubbing a cigarette out on a brick wall and he _sees_ what his siblings cannot, the way the ghosts around him still and try to get his attention in a different way- the way they point and gasp and say _Klaus, look!_ and for once- for once in his life--_ _

__He listens to them._ _

__And then he runs. He trips and stumbles and screams for them to _run! Luther! We have to go!__ _

__He falls, pressing through the shadows, spraining his wrists as he hits the floor and Luther is shouting for him to get out of the way, and Ben is running over--_ _

__Ben’s face is contorted in pain. There’s screaming, and Klaus is yelling for Luther to go, run, everyone needs to run, and he _knows_ he’s in the danger-zone here but Ben is reaching for him and no one is listening and then---_ _

__Blood. Chunks of flesh and gargled screams of sheer agony. Grotesque tentacles are flying around Klaus’ as he covers his head with his arms. Spindly spider legs, howls of the damned. The shadows are so, so, quiet and then---_ _

__-_ _

__“Do you think the ghosts come from the same place as the monsters?”_ _

__Ben sounds scared, young and drowning in his academy pajamas. Klaus tears his eyes away from the woman hanging in the corner of the basement, eyes bulging blood-shot and rotten._ _

__“The void,” Klaus says. It doesn’t sound like him._ _

__Ben flinches away, presses his hand to his chest, “Klaus?”_ _

__“They call it the void,” Klaus continues, like the words are being ripped from his throat, “The place where dead things go to die.”_ _

__( _Somewhere, deep in Ben but nowhere near him, the Horror crows and squirms and yearns. Aches with formless hands to reach forward and embrace this morbid child, vacant-eyed and stinking of death._ )_ _

__Ben whimpers, “Klaus, you’re scaring me-”_ _

__-_ _

__

__The Horror never touches Klaus. It kills and destroys and leaves a bloodbath in its wake, it’s screams echoing with Ben’s._ _

__Then it stops. Then there’s silence. Then there’s a thud._ _

__And Klaus crawls, hand reaching out for his brother, wraps his fingers around Ben’s wrist. Feels for a thready pulse that never comes. Feels the cold from his fingers start to eat at the warmth. Klaus holds on, hears the final rattling gasps of his brother’s destroyed lungs, stares back into lifeless eyes. Klaus doesn’t make a sound._ _

__The room is freezing cold._ _

__-_ _

__“You’re scaring me--”_ _

__Klaus blinks, once, twice, then frowns, “Ben? What’s wrong?”_ _

__The Horror sinks back. The shadows lurk. The void is quiet._ _

__-_ _

__Laurel presses her forehead to his, and he breathes her in like she’s the best drug he could ever find. Her skin is soft, warm, and goosebumps arise wherever his cold hands touch her._ _

__“I’m going to get us out of here,” she says._ _

__The bruises from the night at the bar, dark fingerprints around her throat and the fading purple around one of her eyes speak volumes. The way she shakes, the way her blue eyes are filled with constant terror. She’s starting to look more like Klaus feels. It hurts him._ _

__He’s too high to care. He moans into her mouth, chasing her lips._ _

__She whimpers, a pained noise. He ignores her._ _

__“Baby,” she breathes, voice hitching, “I’ve got a plan. We’re going to get out of here.”_ _

__Her fingers trace the track marks on his forearm, and he shivers._ _

__“I’m going to get you clean,” Laurel continues, “We’re going to run far away from here. You’re going to be okay.”_ _

__She gets dressed, and wraps Klaus in her black shearling patchwork coat. He giggles at her, the way her hands flutter over his face and arms. She’s always so gentle. Klaus wonders if he loves her._ _

__He wonders if he’s capable of loving her._ _

__Laurel presses a kiss to his mouth, salty with tears, and brushes the curls back from his face._ _

__“I’ll be back,” she promises, “Stay here. I’ll be back. Everything is going to be okay.”_ _

__Klaus flaps a hand at her, tips his head off the bed to look at her from upside down, “Sure thing.”_ _

__He catches her hand in his without meaning to, the pulse in her wrist warm against his icy fingertips. The cold stretches out, explores the blue veins underneath pale skin._ _

__The room is freezing cold._ _

__She leaves after that, shoulders set and her small frame trembling from head to toe. When she leaves Ben pops into his eyeline, trying in vain to grab for Klaus._ _

__“Get up,” he hisses, “Something’s wrong. You have to follow her.”_ _

__Klaus scoffs, waving him away, “‘S fine, Benny. She’s fine.”_ _

__Ben is saying something else but he can’t hear him, the water rushing in his ears and the euphoric feeling in his chest taking over everything else. Klaus closes his eyes and drifts._ _

__-_ _

__He wakes up on the dining room floor._ _

__Ben’s ghost stares sadly at him. Klaus gasps, chest wheezing, reaches a shaking hand out for him. Ben reaches back, but his hand phases through Klaus cold fingers, the familiar freezing pins-and-needles. Klaus lets his head fall back to the floor, stifling a sob._ _

__The house is dark, no lights on except for the faint glow from Reginald’s office. Klaus pauses on his slow trip to his room, wonders what would happen if he burst through those doors._ _

___You killed him_ he thinks at the sliver of light, _It was you.__ _

__He doesn’t go, though. He’s always been a coward._ _

__He packs up his bag, stopping momentarily to scrub away tears that fall unbidden. Ben stands next to him, saying something, but Klaus can’t-- won’t-- hear him. He grabs the dimebag of pills stashed in his bedside drawer and throws them back, washing them down with the glass of stale water he’d left by his lamp. Ben’s eyes are wide beneath the blood that cascades down his face._ _

__It’s the only part of him intact. Klaus can’t look at him. The memory of a cold wrist underneath his fingers makes him shudder._ _

__Klaus pulls up his window, the light blue of early morning breaking through the skyline. He’s half out of the fire escape, bare feet cold on the metal grate, boots in one hand and bag slung over his shoulder, pills starting to work their way into his bloodstream and making his vision fuzzy._ _

__“Number Four?”_ _

__He starts, almost tipping backwards with fright. Allison looks at him with wide eyes, frizzy dark hair bouncing around her face. She’s sitting on the end of the fire escape outside her window, bare legs dangling over the rails and cigarette in one hand._ _

__“Ally,” he breathes, “What are you doing out here?”_ _

__“I could ask the same of you,” she responds, and holds the red and white pack next to her out, “Want one?”_ _

__Klaus’s vision is getting blurrier at the edges by the second, his heart pounding in his ears. He shakes his head, exhaling shakily._ _

__“I can’t sleep since Ben,” Allison admits, “I can’t stop thinking about him.”_ _

__Klaus thinks about the apparition in his bedroom window and swallows back the nausea that arises in his stomach. He doesn’t answer her. He doesn’t think he can. He just stares at his sister._ _

__She’s always been so lovely. All dark caramel skin and soft curves, pretty kind eyes. Klaus loves her, but not enough to stay. Not now. Not in this house. Not when Ben’s room sits across the hall collecting dust._ _

__“Where are you going?” Allison asks, tone brittle._ _

__Klaus shrugs. She sighs, angrily, “You can’t leave, Klaus.”_ _

__He tightens his grip on his bag, ignores her as he fiddles with the ladder. It unlatches and unfolds, descending to the gravel below. His fingers feel numb as he grips the rungs._ _

__“Klaus!” Allison’s voice is shrill, “You can’t leave us!”_ _

__He stops, looks up at her. Tears are dripping down her face, making her lovely eyes bloodshot._ _

__“Sorry, Ally,” he says, words slurred, “I can’t stay here.”_ _

__He climbs down as fast as he can, Ben’s ghost joining him on the ground to groan at him. He flaps a hand at it._ _

__“Good luck on your next audition, Ally,” he calls up, and he’s only half-spiteful when he says it, “I heard a rumor that you nailed it.”_ _

__He leaves the academy behind him, the cloud of cold moving with him._ _

__-_ _

__Laurel never comes back._ _

__Klaus gets bored, packs up the little belongings he has scattered around the room. The only thing Laurel left behind was the patchwork coat that he shrugs his arms into. There’s something deep in his chest, a cold prick of ice, that feels maybe like panic. It’s overwhelmed by everything else in his body._ _

__Ben had disappeared an hour ago._ _

__He goes back to the bar. His fingers are numb with cold._ _

__-_ _

__“Two more weeks,” Dave says to him, the blanket of morning humidity covering them both. The sun hasn’t begun to creep over the jungle horizon, and when it does, they will pack everything down and go off towards the front line. There’s been movement. It’s all orders._ _

__The briefcase taunts Klaus._ _

__“Two more weeks,” Dave says, the blue light beginning to illuminate his profile, “Then we’ll be out of here. We get through this, we can go. Far away. Just us.”_ _

__It’s the best thing Klaus has ever heard in his entire life. Just this last fight. Then, just him and Dave and the entire future._ _

__He traces the top of Dave’s cheekbone with his fingers, soft and full of promises. Klaus loves this man so much he can’t breathe._ _

__Cold seeps from his dirt-creased fingertips, down the side of Dave’s face, touching his lips with the slightest tinge of blue._ _

__Klaus doesn’t notice._ _

__-_ _

__He hears that Dad’s dead and he’s not surprised in the least._ _

__-_ _

__He vomits at the base of Ben’s statue, gagging and sobbing until his stomach cramps and his mouth tastes metallic._ _

__-_ _

__“Diego’s brother?”_ _

__Klaus nods, entire body wracked with pain and adrenaline, sweat stinging the cuts about his eyes. The brown haired angel that had entered the room looks so relieved to find him. She reminds him of Ally. She reminds him of Diego. She’s perfectly lovely and brave and Klaus loves her. She’s here to save him, and she cuts his bonds, and Klaus grabs her wrist._ _

__She jerks away from the cold touch, the blue creeping around her wrist-bones. The movement from the bathroom distracts her and Klaus runs, runs for the vent, grabs the weird briefcase, and crawls._ _

__He doesn’t stop when he hears the gunshot._ _

__-_ _

__The gunshots ring out, deafening, explosions, fire, the smell of copper. Strong arms grab him and pull him down, heat flaring up near his ear._ _

__“Woah, that was a close one, hey Dave--”_ _

__Nothing--_ _

__“Dave--”_ _

__-_ _

__The police are surrounding Klaus’ regular alley near the club._ _

__Where he’d meet Laurel after work, split tips, admire whatever ghastly tacky items of clothing Klaus had scored, and Laurel would light a cigarette and offer him a drag. Something like a friendship. Something like love._ _

__The police are moving, and Klaus can see the waves of long pale hair stained with red. Can see the blue limp wrists. _I’m gonna get us out of here._ There’s no need for narrative. No need for Klaus to know. _ _

__He pulls the coat around himself tighter, the air cold, and ignores Ben as they walk away._ _

__-_ _

__“Medic!”_ _

__-_ _

__Klaus thinks of stormy brick roads, of Vanya’s violin cutting off with a screech, the Horror’s tentacles exploding towards him with a rain of blood. He thinks of Diego’s knives shattering in mid-air, Allison with her tongue ripped out and her arm long-eaten, Luther breaking under concrete slabs, Five running out the door and slamming it shut--_ _

__Over and over again. He dreams of his siblings dying. He dreams of their ghosts._ _

__He dreams of watching them die_ _

__-_ _

__“And then what happened?”_ _

__“We died.”_ _

__-_ _

__God presses her fingers to his palm, soft and light, and says,_ _

__“You are death, my child.”_ _

__-_ _

__Klaus lies in the bathtub, staring at the ceiling, headphones clamped firmly to his head, and doesn’t cry. He thinks._ _

__He thinks about those nannies’ that no one but him can remember, all appearing as bent-neck, bleeding ghosts. He remembers shaking their hands, like a good polite boy, and the goosebumps that appeared on their skin._ _

__He thinks about brown trees and grass and the plant that Luther kept on his desk and Klaus touched one leaf and it shrivelled._ _

__He thinks about Five slamming the door shut._ _

__He thinks about Ben gasping and dying as Klaus reaches for his hand. How he went limp when their fingers touched._ _

__He thinks about all the people who’d overdosed next to him, cold and sad._ _

__He thinks about long pale blonde hair and red bullet-wound sprays and broken promises._ _

__He thinks about the brunette detective and her steely determination. He never looked back._ _

__He thinks about Vietnam. All his tour-mates. Dying and dead._ _

__He thinks about sobbing over a bleeding chest and agonizing pain because this one, good, happy, thing wasn’t allowed to die._ _

__He thinks about a razor slipping across his cheek and his father’s piercing eyes, and _You were always my greatest disappointment, Number Four_._ _

__He thinks about how cold grew from his fingers across skin, the glazed blue sheen of their veins, the hairs standing on end, the shivers they suppressed. And Klaus._ _

___You are death, my child._ _ _

__Klaus thinks he finally gets it._ _

__-_ _

__Klaus hits his head at the nightclub. Klaus sits in that chair and dies._ _

__Over and over._ _

__God sends him back. _You cannot die. Death cannot die.__ _

__They get home and Klaus feels nothing. He sits in that bath and feels nothing. Diego cries and Klaus._ _

__He can’t feel anything._ _

__He goes back to the bathtub, and waits._ _

__-_ _

__The hour before the final surge against the front-line, Dave seems uncharacteristically tense. His shoulders are hard muscle, pulled into himself, and he’s shivering despite the overbearing heat. They sit in those dug-out-mud trenches and Klaus sits next to Dave and there’s a rock in his stomach._ _

__“Hey, Klaus,” Dave says, and Dave calls him baby and sweetheart and Spook and all sorts of nicknames, so this is different, “What are you scared of?”_ _

__His hand is next to Klaus’. Klaus threads their fingers. Dave’s hand is cold._ _

__“The dark,” Klaus answers truthfully, and then, “This.”_ _

__The gunshots ring out._ _

__-_ _

__The bathwater ripples, and the void opens up above his head. It’s dark and spindly, the ghosts clawing at it. Klaus looks on in bored amusement, and the void shudders. The ghosts cry and scream but keep their distance._ _

__The ghosts are scared of him._ _

__Klaus grins at nothing in particular, takes a drag from his cigarette, and then stubs it out against the wall._ _

__Everything that had been hovering in the air falls to the floor with a resounding clang._ _

__-_ _

__In 1989, a green eyed, dark haired baby is born in a cold apartment in Germany, and kills his mother._ _

__The void between the living and the dead cracks open like a broken geode._ _

__The cold seeps through._ _

__-_ _

__Fin._ _

**Author's Note:**

> wooooooh this fic is done. I’ve rewritten it about three times now. Some things:
> 
> \- the italics have failed massively on this, and I can’t fix them right now, thanks Ao3.
> 
> \- Klaus is canonically pansexual. You can interpret his relationship with Laurel however you want. She is purposely left up to interpretation by the reader. 
> 
> \- I hope it wasn’t too confusing. I tried to give it a surreal, almost jarring tone, to try and mirror the chaotic personification of Klaus.
> 
> \- Next fics will focus on other characters, hopefully!
> 
> follow me on twitter [here](https://twitter.com/maniicmemegirl) for a laugh.


End file.
